Wargaming Ltd said they now believe no Spitfires were delivered in crates and buried at RAF Mingaladon during 1945 and 1946.

The company said that archival records showed that the RAF unit that handled shipments through Rangoon docks only received 37 aircraft in total from three transport ships between 1945 and 1946.

Most of the Spitfires that were in Burma at the time appear to have been re-exported in the autumn of 1946, they said.

Last month project leader David Cundall, of North Lincolnshire, said he believed they would find the Spitfires but were just digging in the wrong place and said he would apologise if he was proved wrong.

Mr Cundall has spent the last 17 years trying to discover the truth of claims that unused, unassembled Spitfires were packed into crates and buried by the RAF at sites in Burma on the orders of Lord Mountbatten at the end of the war in 1945.